It is coming as predicted: Amazon will not invest in African ecommerce but will push more into African cloud by possibly partnering/investing in major telcos in key African markets. My thesis that investing in Africa ecommerce would be hard is purely based on the heterogeneous and disparate natures of our economies, unlike India which is one market of a “continent” or China which Amazon failed but not for lack of trying. The logistical challenge to get scale in Africa in order to reduce marginal cost might have scared Amazon on any ecommerce plan.

In Africa, you have to work really harder on pockets of economies which are so small that a small American city can give you more sales than a country! But as the journey to the cloud and broad digitization continues, Amazon Web Services (AWS) understands that Africa is a huge growth opportunity because with our infrastructural paralyses, cloud is even optimized for businesses: when you are not sure the electricity will be there, it is better to put that data in the cloud than a local data center which will require a 24/7 generator. 

So, the news that Amazon is partnering with Safaricom to sell cloud services in East Africa should not come as a shock: “In addition, Safaricom will be able to offer AWS services to East-African customers, allowing businesses of all sizes to quickly get started on AWS cloud and accelerate innovation.”

Safaricom has announced a strategic agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS), which will see the Telco become a reseller of AWS services.

The agreement is designed to accelerate Safaricom’s internal IT transformation, lower costs and provide it with a blueprint and skilled resources to assist customers with their journey to the cloud.

Safaricom Plc CEO Michael Joseph said the agreement will allow the company to accelerate its efforts to enable digital transformation in Kenya.

“We chose to partner with AWS because it offers customers the broadest and deepest cloud platform, overall commitment to security excellence, and a strong culture of customer obsession,” Joseph said.

In addition, Safaricom will be able to offer AWS services to East-African customers, allowing businesses of all sizes to quickly get started on AWS cloud and accelerate innovation.

In Nigeria, I expect either 9Mobile or Airtel to get that opportunity; MTN has a big cloud business and may not be open to such. Sure, MTN Cloud is mainly enterprise cloud, not for the startups, SMEs, etc which Amazon has built a tribe. Glo is also invested in enterprise cloud. 

Yet, while Amazon deploys the solutions, indigenous players like Layer3.cloud which are hosted in Abuja with full sovereignty blessing provide opportunities for highly sensitive businesses. You must not miss that mark.

As coronavirus (Corvid-19) ruffles economic ordinances, market systems and puts more humans at risk, the Board of Medcera, this morning, approved to share our Medcera technology to any public health institution that needs a modern health care tool to manage the virus containment. Medcera is the world’s first location-agnostic electronic health record system, making it possible that patients’ medical records are stored in one location, irrespective of city, hospital or domain. In other words, your medical record is always up to date, no matter where you are, provided the clinics are using Medcera. Medcera has integration with labs, imaging centers, pharmacy and insurance.

To collate and aggregate data, health institutions can use Medcera for their  agents and field workers. And in real time, via Medcera Insights, experts can see a heat map of potential risks as data is collected. While our technology cannot reveal the patient identity due to HIPAA compliance, we can tell you locations with risk vectors. That way you can activate the traditional protocols based on the healthcare regulations in your locality. 

If you reach out, our team will set up accounts for all your field workers and provide you access to Medcera Insights which has an advanced data analytics system to give you insights on data collected in real time. We are waiving all associated costs to any institution, private or public, in Africa and beyond. One requirement is that you must work with us via a licensed medical doctor fully licensed to practice medicine in your constituency as only doctors meet certain HIPAA requirements on patient data even if that data is anonymized.

All fees have been waived including training your team.

Our contact is info@medcera.com

Thank you Africa Integrity Prize for recognizing FASMICRO. We remain focused on our drive to “cure” extreme poverty in Africa through Zenvus.

In this connection, Africa Integrity Prize (AIP) is a value-driven project of the African Child Foundation for identifying, recognizing and rewarding Africans and friends, brands, products, individuals and organizations who put the continent first in positive light, for their demonstrated ability to sustain Integrity, innovate and invent for the social economic progress of the Continent, individuals and organizations who have proffered way forward using home grown solution to solve the devastating effect of corruption, ineptitude, poverty, quackery, i.e Africa’s solution to African Problems rather than begging for foreign aid and also for the promotion of excellence in the academic system towards that end.